In EAGLE 6.0.1 (Windows), the 'unpopulated' cross has the same
dimensions as the surrounding rectangle of the 'show' command. For
'show', this is not so bad, because it's just a screen display, but for
the 'unpopulated' cross, this sometimes consumes so much space that
neighbouring parts are also affected, which doesn't look very clear in
the printout (especially for b/w printouts).
Suggestions
1. Do NOT take the surrounding rectangle from out of the LIBRARY
definition, but from the REAL surrounding rectangle.
2. In the attached picture, the rather large 'unpopulated' cross
could be replaced by a cross with the dimension of the gray
rectangle, which defines the REAL surrounding rectangle of
the part.
3. For better visibility of small parts, the cross might be a BIT
larger than this rectangle (say, 2mm in every direction), but
NOT as large as it is now.
Andreas Weidner